


Saints Protect Him Now

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), My Chemical Romance, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Not Beta Read, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, better safe than sorry, but kobra's pretty fucked up in the head and thats what this is about, everything is solved eventually, not really - Freeform, pls love kobra, so id rather tag it and have it wrong than say not tag it and then cause some a breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 10:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20965103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: Kobra Kid was many things. A motorbaby, a crash queen, a microchip, a dust angel - in Desert terms, he was just about anything he wanted to be.Of course, anything but okay. He didn’t know okay - and it bled into the real world oh-so-often. He wasn’t okay, and he knew it, and yet he still couldn’t ask for help.And the Phoenix Witch, ever concerned about her favored killjoys, shows him a Desert reality he could create with one little action, a world marked with sorrow and rage -The catch is, this reality only comes true should Kobra pull that trigger.





	Saints Protect Him Now

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So, from reading the tags, this is very obviously going to be triggering for some people so if this is something you struggle with I wouldn't recommend reading this! What I will tell you is that no one dies, technically, but at the same time, again, please don't read if you think you might be triggered! Please!
> 
> National Suicide Prevention Line - 1-800-273-8255

The Desert’s best Motorbaby was a Crash Queen in the worst way. 

Party Poison was the real Crash Queen of the crew, Kobra Kid knew that much. But he was a Crash Queen in the worst way - he wasn’t the type of dramatic that gave a Crash Queen their name. He was just born to fail, and he was the best at crashing, wasn’t he?

Born to fail, best at crashing, and he was so, so tired of everyone telling him it was fine, he was fine, he wasn’t fine and he was so tired of being told everything was okay.

It wasn’t okay, nothing was okay - nothing was okay and why did no one believe him?

Maybe he should’ve gone with Party on the supply run. Maybe he should’ve gone with Ghoul and Jet down to the Station, because he sure as Hell wasn’t going to be making any smart decisions all alone like this.

Yeah. He knew that. He knew he wasn’t okay and he knew that he shouldn’t be alone, but at the same time, he had to be fine. He was a killjoy, he was the son of the Sun and the sand, he was supposed to be able to handle living in the Zones.

He wasn’t, though. He wasn’t fit to live out here, with all the freedom they had. He wasn’t made to handle his brother ignoring him and he wasn’t made to handle being by himself. 

He wasn’t made to live like this, okay?

There were so many signs that he wasn’t, he just wasn’t fit for out here. But he wasn’t fit to live in Battery City, either, as another hapless drone that went about his day smiling. He didn’t belong in the Zones and he didn’t belong in Battery City.

So where did he belong?

He belonged with the Witch, he supposed. A Desert deity with no confirmed existence, a guide with no real obligations. He liked that, he supposed. Not having responsibilities, drifting from place to place whenever he wanted.

Not having a care in the world about the brother who could care less where he was, not having a care in the world about whether or not he ended up dead in a ditch, not having a care in the world about who he could be and who he was becoming.

Who he was becoming, was a ghost.

He knew that, just like he knew it wasn’t a good idea to stay by himself, just like he knew he’d devastate Jet and maybe Ghoul if he died. But not Party - Party could never even give him the time of day, what would change if he was dead?

Was that why he found himself where he was now, knees hugged tightly to his chest in his room, ray gun sitting on the floor next to him - he was shaking, why was he shaking? He shouldn’t be shaking, should he?

Or maybe he absolutely should, because his thoughts kept swirling around and around about what could happen, what would happen?

He picked up the ray gun.

Kobra nearly laughed to himself, shaking his entire frame. It always came back to this, didn’t it? Him and a ray gun. In one way or another, it always came back to him and a ray gun. 

The ray gun seemed to burn against his temple, but he didn’t mind all too much. Or did he? He didn’t know, he didn’t know, there was so much of everything and so little of nothing at the same time. It was simultaneously too loud and too quiet, too hot and too cold, to be or not to be. 

If he pulled that trigger, he’d be abandoning his crew, wouldn’t he? Ghoul was the only other one of them who made any carbons, would Jet have to get a job or something? Would Party have to come home more?

Oh, who was he kidding? If anything, Party would be home even less if Kobra was dead. He’d pretend he never had a brother, he’d pretend, pretend, pretend.

So maybe Kobra shouldn’t pretend he’s fine. 

He could do that spectacularly well if he was dead.

Part of Kobra was waiting for Party to burst through the door, take the ray gun from him and let him cry into his shoulder, part of him was waiting for someone to save him and he was worth it. But no one was going to come and save him, and he was going to have to save himself if he deserved to be saved at all. 

He didn’t deserve to be saved.

His finger tightened over the trigger only a fraction before he couldn’t feel it in his hand anymore - 

“Everyone deserves to be saved.”

Kobra looked around wildly, but nothing was in focus anymore; everything had a blue tinge to it, as if he was looking at it through a static screen. Like he was a ghost.

“Everyone deserves to be saved,” the voice repeated, and it echoed throughout the entire room, sounding almost like it was spoken through an old microphone, one where it cut out sometimes and the feedback was also like static. 

Then, out of the corner of his eye, something, something; appearing seemingly out of mist, a woman. A woman, with mangy black hair, almost like Ghoul’s, but a black-and-white mask covering her entire face. 

It reminded him of someone, someone who he’d never met but had heard of, a normal killjoy but he couldn’t place it - but he knew who this was. This was the Phoenix Witch. But who was she reminding him of?

“I don’t,” Kobra told her, but he wasn’t looking at her. They were standing side by side. Standing, standing, when did he start standing?

Then he realized the reason everything looked like he was watching it on an old television screen because he wasn’t in the plane of the living anymore.

Kobra, of course, knew the stories about the Witch - the deity who guided ghosted ‘joys to their afterlife if their belongings were delivered to the Mailbox. He’d never met her before and hadn’t really been sure she existed, but here she was, now, and they were looking down on the moment Kobra had been in as if it was paused.

He saw himself, sitting there, tear tracks running down his face and covered in grime, curled up into a ball, ray gun to his temple. He looked pathetic, and it wasn’t an exaggeration. There he was, the feared Venom Brother with suicidal ideation, huh?

“It’s not pathetic to want everything to go away,” the Witch hummed next to him. He didn’t look over at her, but she wasn’t looking over at him, so it was a fair trade-off. 

“I don’t want everything to go away,” Kobra frowned. It’s true, he didn’t - that’s not what it looked like, right? He didn’t want everything to go away. There were some things he loved. It was the things that made him feel like he was just a liability that was dragged along that he wanted to go away. He told the Witch as much, but before he got through the first word he realized she’d basically been reading his thoughts so far. 

“For those to go away, everything has to,” the Witch shrugged. “What do you see?”

“You already know what. Me, playing a game of Russian roulette with my ray gun.”

Just because Kobra wasn’t looking at her didn’t mean he didn’t sense her rolling her eyes at him through that mask. “I’ll answer for you, then, smartass. Yes, it’s you, in one of your most trying times. Bet it crossed your mind, what’s gonna happen when I’m gone? Of course, then you brushed it off as mild upset, right?”

“You should stop reading through my thoughts,” Kobra frowned - anyone else saying that to him would’ve deeply disturbed him on many levels, because the Witch was right, but something about the goddess made it so easy to talk to her. She didn’t feel omnipotent, she felt more like an oddly helpful waitress at a truck stop you’ve never been too before and isn’t there when you try to go back.

The Witch shook her head. “I’ve been through this routine with you two before. I know how this works. Y’wanna see what would really happen, if you did pull that trigger? Or do you want to keep drowning in your own head, ‘cos fast-forward a bit and you’ll be with me again, in a very different way.”

“You can do that?” Kobra asked, instead of saying something along the lines of ‘I will be as depressed as I want, thank you very much. Something was telling him there was a question he should be asking, but her words were fluid - she said them, Kobra knew it, but part of him just couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t keep hold of any questions that didn’t immediately pop up. 

“I can,” the Witch nodded. “For a price. But you’ve been paid for in full. Shall we?”

“We shall,” Kobra damn near stuttered, scrambling to follow after the Witch as she started walking away. Well, more like floating, but she seemed uncomfortably human for now. Maybe she was just a human, a last-ditch effort of his subconscious to stay alive, create this whole scenario. 

The scene shifted, like the channel cutting out and then the signal coming back. Almost fast-forwarding, like she’d said earlier. 

She skipped over the part where Kobra actually did pull the trigger - he winced, shutting his eyes tightly because he still had to watch it in fast motion. His body fell to the ground, lifeless, ill-fated ray gun falling out of his hand to the floor.

Kobra opened his eyes to peak from a morbid curiosity (this is what he agreed to, after all). As if on cue, Kobra watched as Party slammed Kobra’s door open, grinning, saying something along the lines of, “Hey, Kobra! Wanna see what I -” before he stopped cold, and dropped whatever was in his hands.

Party just stood there for a moment, and Kobra held his breath. This was it, this was the moment he was going to find out that Party really did hate him and think he was a liability, why did he agree to this, this was a bad idea -

“No…” Party mumbled, shaking his head vigorously. “No, no, no, no, no, no…”

He just kept mumbling, over and over, over and offer, shaking his head. 

Then he looked up - Kobra almost felt like Party was looking him dead in the eyes, despite this hypothetical future. If Kobra’s tears had dried by now, they were coming back and with a passion.

Kobra had never seen so much heartbreak in Party’s eyes. Not even when they had first escaped the City, when he and Kobra had been separated for a while. Party had gotten lost and Kobra found him curled in on himself and crying, hiding. Party was older than him, but he’d been so lost and confused and so utterly terrified it had broken Kobra’s heart.

This wasn’t lost or confused, though. It was terror, Kobra could see that, and he wasn’t the best at reading people (especially Party) (Oh, who was he kidding. He was amazing at reading everyone except Party), and Party wasn’t even crying, but it was...it was something even worse. He couldn’t put a name on it if he life depended on it.

Ironic, huh?

Back at the scene at hand, Party finally seemed to realize he could move, running over and kicking Kobra’s ray gun far, far away, like the deed hadn’t already been done, frantic and confused for only a second before he settled for holding Kobra, again mumbling, “No, no, no, no...no, no...should’a been here earlier...Kobra, Kobra you gotta, you gotta wake up, Kobra, you gotta wake up...you gotta, you gotta, please…” 

Party was crying now, too. Crying wasn’t the right word for it, more like...sobbing. Yeah, he was sobbing, stuttering over his words and sniffling and rocking back and forth. 

Kobra’s temple, where he’d been holding the ray gun, burned. It burned, it burned - he doubled over as the wave of nausea hit him, holding his head. 

“He cares, y’know,” said the Witch, offhand. 

Through the pain in his head, Kobra managed to look over at her - she seemed perfectly fine, leaning against an imaginary wall; her mask was pulled up, taming down some of her ratty hair, and she was pulling out a cigarette she seemingly got out of nowhere.

The most striking thing about her face, that brought Kobra back to this...reality he was watching, was her eyes. She did not have a soft face, it was all hard angles, but it reminded him of someone, but the eyes really solidified it.

They were ice blue. She looked like Ghoul. She looked one hell of a lot like Ghoul or - or what was her name? Ghoul’s ma, Crows...Crows Claws!

Kobra found himself unable to answer her. He was just staring at her resemblance to Ghoul, now. Huh. If this was a last-ditch effort of his subconscious, he was going to file a complaint because Ghoul’s mom who he’d never met wasn’t allowed to be his diner-waitress-who-wants-to-deck-the-guy-up-front version of the Witch. 

He would have to stay alive to file a complaint. Food for thought, he supposed.

He never wanted to see that look of heartbreak on Party’s face again - or how frantic, panicked and downright delirious Party looked and sounded while he held Kobra. 

“That’s the spirit,” the Witch said, glancing at Kobra. “Stay alive, don’t break his heart.”

“He doesn’t really care about me, y’know,” Kobra said, despite what the Witch had said earlier, before Kobra had realized she looked like Ghoul’s mom. 

“I already told you,” she huffed, “He does. He’s just a little...A little lost, I guess you should say. You’re the one who needs to bring him back home. And you can do that when you’re stuck with me, but, well. You saw how that turned out.”

Kobra opened his mouth to answer, but no syllables came out, no matter how hard he tried - his confusion must’ve shown, because the Witch tsked and held up a silencing finger. “I can show you what he does because of this, too. It’s not optional.”

Snapping her fingers, Kobra watched as the scene shifted again, but it all went completely static for a second this time instead of simply fast-forwarding. The scene he saw was rather different from the one he was expecting - 

There was Party, hair bright as ever and eyes cold as ice, staring at a building - a burning building. The roof had already collapsed, and if any of the building had been white it was quickly being eaten away by either smoke or flame. 

They were in Bat City, Kobra realized, glancing around incredulously. Party was standing a ways away from the burning building - Kobra belatedly took in the details, the singed ends of Party’s hair, the blood on his jacket, the ash smeared across his face.

More importantly, Kobra supposed, the mask he was wearing. It was a red domino mask. 

It was Kobra’s old domino mask.

And in Party’s hand, there wasn’t the yellow one, but a green domino mask - cracked around the edges and Kobra thought he saw blood on the corner. In his thigh holster, not the iconic yellow ray gun, but a blue on.

Ghoul’s mask and Jet’s gun.

They would never leave those.

Then again, Party would never walk into Bat City by himself with any rational reasoning. And that was a Better Living Industries building.

What happened to Jet and Ghoul?

“Good question. Shame I’m not gonna answer it - you’ve had enough trauma for a while, kid. Just know your brother over there didn’t walk into that building alone,” said the Witch. Kobra looked over - she was filing her nails. Her nails were more like claws, and she was sharpening them. What a calming thought.

Kobra took a deep breath, the image of Party and that burning building stuck in a loop in his mind. He couldn’t get it out of his head; the resignation on Party’s face, the way he was wearing Kobra’s mask, Jet’s gun, the cracked version of Ghoul’s domino mask. Despite the coldness in his eyes, the way the burning building mimicked something in Party’s eyes, and part of Kobra didn’t want to dwell on it too much. 

“So, what’s the verdict?” the Witch asked before Kobra could speak. “You gonna make the smart decision ‘n go back and put that gun away, or you gonna blow your brains out?”

The joke was lost on Kobra, who’d never seen an actual gun (the Witch felt bad for that one. It was a good phrase), but he nodded slowly. Making the decision for himself. “I -”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. I’ll leave you with this -” the Witch interrupted, walking over to both ruffle his hair and hand him something. It was a dog tag, like the dog tags people in the City had.

Kobra thrust his hand out to give it back immediately. He didn’t want to see his City name, he didn’t have his dog tag for a reason.

The Witch shook her head, pressing it back to his chest. “You can’t return a gift.”

Hesitantly, he pulled it back, to read the inscription - his heart leaped before he read the words. It wasn’t his City name - it was...it was his name, the Kobra Kid, engraved into the metal, then underneath, in smaller print, ‘KICKASS BROTHER. DESERT’S BEST MOTORBABY. TOO SMART.’

“It’s what would - or will be, your decision - be on your tombstone,” the Witch said, right as Kobra came to that conclusion. He stared at her, gaping. “I’ll whisk you back to your little breakdown, now.”

It wasn’t an option. Kobra barely shouted out “Wait -!” before the static came back, and the Witch dissipated into black smoke next to him.

When the static disappeared this time, he found himself staring at a wall - it took him all of a second to realize, I’m back, I’m back and I’m alive.

His body seemed slow to catch up to his mind, but when it did, before he could put any more pressure on that trigger he threw the damn ray gun across the room, where it hit the wall with a clang.

Frantically, he felt for the dog tag at his neck. It was there, right? It wasn’t just a figment of his imagination for the sole purpose of keeping him alive?

It was there, he found with a relieved breath. It was there, and, holding it up to read the inscription, he found the engravings were so faded they might as well not have been there. But the words that had been there would be burned into Kobra’s memory, he already knew. 

He sat for a second, unaware of what to do, before he scrambled onto his feet - his back popped and his body didn’t particularly appreciate the sudden movement, but it certainly appreciated it more than the pressure of the ray gun.

Speaking of that, Kobra crossed the room and shoved it in the holster by his side, before checking how he looked in the cracked mirror he’d salvaged from wherever.

His eyes were red and puffy, his nose was runny, and he was still crying if he was being honest. But he didn’t look like he just went on a trip with the Witch, and as he stuffed the dog tag under his shirt, there was no evidence of it.

The others were back, right? The others had to be back by now, Kobra wanted them to be back by now. 

The light that assaulted his retinas when he opened his door was unwelcome, but he didn’t take the time to let his vision adjust before he ambled around to find someone, anyone, they had to be back, right? They needed to be back.

The first person Kobra ran into was Ghoul, quite literally - Kobra didn’t bother figuring out what Ghoul was doing or where he was going, instead, stopping him from walking away and fumbling to get his ray gun out.

He shoved his ray gun into Ghoul’s hands, patting down his pockets to find his switchblade and added that to the pile. He looked like a wreck, he knew, but he didn’t know if Ghoul would ever know why, and he didn’t particularly care. “You - uh - take those. Please. And hide them. I don’t - I don’t wanna know where they are.”

Ghoul’s confusion showed on his face - Kobra pushed him away before he could ask questions, repeating what he’d said originally. 

If Ghoul was back, then Jet was back, but was Party back? Where would Party be if Party was already back?

Maybe the Garage, even though it was always Jet or Kobra himself in the garage, but that was where they kept the spray paint, so maybe?

Kobra wasn’t really processing his surroundings so much as letting his muscle memory take him where he wanted to be - he really focused in on what was around him when he spotted Party’s bright red hair leaning on the hood of the Trans Am.

Party was laughing and smiling about something Jet was saying, but Kobra wasn’t listening and didn’t plan to - of all the things he’d seen in the last while, Party smiling wasn’t one of them.

Kobra didn’t really mean to walk up without saying anything, but in hindsight, he absolutely walked up to Party and hugged him fiercely without saying a single word. 

He sniffled, holding Party tighter - Party seemed confused for a second but hugged back without complaint. Maybe he’d seen Kobra’s face, maybe he didn’t. What mattered was that he was here and he was smiling and he was hugging Kobra and Kobra was alive and so was Ghoul and Jet. 

Kobra pulled back impulsively, not saying anything to Party’s confused expression and tilted head, instead gesturing Jet to come join their hug.

Confused, Jet did.

Breaking the silence would break the moment, to Kobra, so he kept silent, holding them both close. All of them, alive, breathing, no tombstones, and no fire and no masks. 

They were missing Ghoul, but that was okay for now. Ghoul was hiding Kobra’s gun and switchblade, which was maybe even more important than the hug, and they could rope him into it later, and everything would be okay.

It would be okay. Maybe Kobra had needed to hear that more than anything, even if it was just him telling himself, being crowded and hugged by the most important people in the world to him.

**Author's Note:**

> and if you did make it to the end, what'd you think of this Wreck(tm)?


End file.
